Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains Page 14

  8

  Skulking around the streets of the New Town like a private eye in a Brighton guesthouse, I had missed the removal of Pip Balfour’s body, but I came upon the rest of the household restoring itself around an open bottle of rum and the inevitable pot of tea.

  ‘A terrible thing,’ said Stanley, with his mouth pushed out and his ample chin sunk on his chest. Millie nodded, biting her lip, but Mrs Hepburn flicked him an irritated glance and Clara rolled her eyes at Eldry.

  ‘It’s not something I ever thought to do,’ said Mr Faulds, ‘hold the front door open for my master to be carried out in a black box and put on a cart like something for the rag and bone man.’

  ‘And all them next door out on their steps watching,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘That’s the last time I find a packet of butter for her when she’s not sent her note in to the dairy in time. The besom! But I daresay I’d have been keen enough to see what was to do if it had been in their house and I shouldn’t call her for the same. I’ll take some biscuits through to her when they’re cooled.’

  ‘I’d better get back up to mistress,’ I said, but Mrs Hepburn waved me into my chair.

  ‘You take your rest while you can, Fanny. We’ve been popping up, the girls and me, off and on, and she’s dead to the world. Sleep’s the best thing for her today. I’ve got a jug of toast tea making and I’ve ordered in some calves’ feet for jelly, be ready by tomorrow night. That’ll set her right again.’

  ‘Toast tea?’ I said and there were a few giggles from the younger servants until Mrs Hepburn fixed them with a glare.

  ‘Just burnt toast steeped in water while it cools and then strained through,’ she said. ‘And don’t you go sniggering, John Petty, because you were happy enough to have it that time you caught the gastric flu and couldn’t keep a boiled egg down.’

  ‘Mrs Hepburn, please,’ said Mr Faulds, ‘don’t remind us of it. We were a sorry crew that week, Fanny. Harry and Maggie didn’t succumb but the rest of us were laid flat. I couldn’t lift my head from the pillow. Ah, but mistress was like a mother to us all, remember, Kitty?’

  ‘Aye, and she made that stew – as if we weren’t sick enough already,’ said Eldry, to a gale of laughter and a few groans, and then they settled back into a comfortable silence again. I looked around them. No one was tense, no one was anxious. Now that Eldry had recovered her spirits and Mattie had cheered up there was nothing to show that this was not an ordinary afternoon in a well-staffed and under-stretched establishment. The clock ticked, the fire crackled and the only other sound was the click of Millie’s knitting needles and the occasional snip of scissors as Clara unpicked a hem for restitching.

  ‘By, but I’m missing my News,’ said Mrs Hepburn presently. ‘It feels that funny not to be catching up with the world at teatime.’

  ‘More power to their elbows,’ said Harry. ‘And we’ve got our news anyway.’ He waved a printed sheet in the air. ‘Official strike bulletin, straight from the TUC District Committee. So we won’t need to let another copy of that scab rag over the door.’ He gave a pointed look to Mattie who ducked his head.

  ‘I didnae ken,’ he said. ‘It was for master, not for me.’

  ‘Give it a rest, Harry,’ Clara said. ‘It’s not as if it was Churchill’s bloomin’ Gazette. You’ll no’ catch germs off it.’

  ‘And I cannae see mistress wanting one of your bulletins,’ said John.

  ‘Besides, there’s more going on than the blessed strike,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘I’d like to see what they’re going to print about our do today for a start.’

  ‘I won’t sit and have it read out to me,’ said Harry. ‘Nor Mattie.’

  ‘And I won’t,’ said Eldry, gazing at Harry as she spoke. John snorted, but Harry himself affected to notice nothing.

  ‘I can bring you some news,’ I said. ‘There are gangs on Princes Street. A policeman told me.’

  ‘Gangs?’ said Eldry and Millie together.

  ‘Gangs of what?’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘Gangs of who?’

  ‘Here, Mr Faulds,’ said Clara, ‘did you bolt the front door at the back of they mortuary men?’

  ‘Gangs of respectable citizens exercising their right of free assembly,’ said Harry loudly over us all. ‘See what it says here, Miss Rossiter?’ He jabbed his bulletin. ‘No attention should be paid to rumours. The official bulletin, which will be issued at least daily, will keep you advised.’

  ‘I am simply passing on what was told to me by a policeman in uniform,’ I said, although Harry looked unimpressed by such credentials. ‘But I do appreciate your point,’ I went on. ‘And our right of free assembly is something to defend most strenuously. They can only dream of it in the streets of Moscow these days.’ Harry, who had opened his mouth to spout on some more, shut it again. Hugh would have been proud of me.

  I took Lollie’s toast tea up to her at six o’clock and found her wide awake, staring up at the ceiling of her bedroom. She gave a faint smile when she saw the glass in my hand.

  ‘Pour that away, will you, Dandy?’ she said. ‘And then tell Mrs Hepburn it did wonders for me.’ I was curious enough to take a sip of the stuff as I bore it off to the bathroom and it was a revelation: the recipe had not sounded appetising, but how a combination of toasted bread and plain water could come to taste so extravagantly vile was beyond me. I rinsed out the glass and returned to Lollie’s bedside.

  ‘I’m trying not to think about what’s happening,’ she said, sitting up a little. Despite her words I could hear that the note of numb disbelief was gone from her voice and it relieved me. ‘About what they might be doing to him, right now. I’m trying to think about happier times instead, but I can’t help wishing I had been brave enough, before they took him away, not just to say goodbye, but to see what was done. To see it. So that I shouldn’t be wondering. Superintendent Hardy said he had been stabbed. That’s the trouble. It’s such a very striking word that it’s hard not to imagine. Was it in the heart? I keep wondering where would be quickest and least painful. Was it in the heart, Dandy?’

  ‘Can’t you just put it out of your mind altogether?’ I asked, but Lollie’s face, as I spoke, told that this was a blunder.

  ‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘It wasn’t quick, was it? It was slow and dreadful and that’s what you don’t want to tell me and—’

  ‘His throat,’ I said, speaking over her and cursing myself.

  Lollie lay back down and looked straight up at the ceiling while her breathing returned to something near normal.

  ‘And what kind of knife was it?’ she said at last.

  ‘One of the carving knives from the kitchen. Mrs Hepburn recognised it.’

  ‘I see. Well, at least I can be sure he didn’t suffer too much then,’ she said. ‘I mean, if his throat was cut he can’t have. What’s the name of the big vein – or is it an artery? I never know the difference, do you?’

  ‘The jugular,’ I said, and I did not correct her assumption. If she could carry on thinking of a clean cut and instant oblivion, all the better. I wondered if she would have to attend the inquiry, or would choose to attend a trial, were one to come, in the end.

  ‘And Mrs Hepburn,’ said Lollie, ‘she will throw the knife away, won’t she?’

  ‘I should be very surprised if Superintendent Hardy is thoughtless enough to return it,’ I said, with a shudder. ‘Are you going to get up again today, Lollie? I wouldn’t advise it.’ Lollie shook her head. ‘Well, let me run you a cool bath and then I’ll ask Mrs Hepburn to send up . . . what? Some scrambled egg?’ I shifted a little before carrying on with the next bit, feeling a heel for even suggesting it. ‘Then if you didn’t mind, I wondered if perhaps you could do without me overnight. Actually, I was wondering if perhaps I could say downstairs that you felt in need of familiar faces and perhaps someone else could step in completely. It’s just that I’d learn so much more if I were down there, on the spot as it were, than up here with you.’

  ‘On the spot,’ said Lollie as though she had neve
r heard the expression and were trying to decipher it. ‘Do you think one of them knows something about it, Dandy? Do you think one of them let someone in?’

  ‘No, not exactly,’ I said, turning for the bathroom again. I did not want to trouble her with all the bothersome details of keys and bolts and overhearings, for I was certain such thoughts would be keeping me awake long into the night and they would certainly stop the widow from resting easy. Besides, until Hardy came back with news of the brandy glass, she was still a suspect and the less I told her the better. ‘Don’t dwell on it, dear,’ I said. ‘We shall know more tomorrow when Superintendent Hardy returns.’

  ‘But do swap places, by all means,’ she said, ‘if you’re sure you don’t mind them thinking that you’ve displeased me in some way.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I assured her. ‘I shall ask Clara then. Or,’ I said, speaking carefully. ‘Phyllis. When she gets back.’

  ‘Either would be fine,’ said Lollie.

  ‘You’d feel safe, I suppose, with them?’ I asked. ‘You don’t suspect that one of them might be mixed up in any of this?’

  ‘Do you?’ Lollie sat up a little and stared at me.

  ‘I haven’t formed particular suspicions at all yet,’ I said. ‘But I do want to know this, Lollie dear.’ I asked her then about Pip’s wallet and pocket change and about staff pay and tips and bonuses and any other money that might be left lying around anywhere. (Hugh always keeps the safe in his business room locked up and changes the combination with feverish regularity, but – as he never tires of informing me – not everyone (meaning me) has the good habits of an orderly mind.)

  She managed to tell me that Pip kept very little cash upon his person as a rule and tended to walk up to the bank when he needed to, hardly used the safe at all (as I saw would be sensible for a town dweller – and how it flattened me to realise what a country mouse I had turned into not to have thought of that for myself), then she began showing signs of mounting agitation again and I drew the interview to a close.

  ‘I’ll go and get one of the girls then,’ I said, soothingly.

  ‘No, I’m fine for now,’ Lollie said. ‘Just send Phyllis up at bedtime, would you?’

  Phyllis was compliant enough about spending the night on the little chaise in her mistress’s bedroom.

  ‘Good to get away from your snoring,’ she said to Clara, who stuck out her tongue.

  ‘I’ll fill her hot bottle for you to take up,’ I said. I knew that Grant always filled mine, on those many nights of the year when even a sleeping Dalmatian pinning the blankets down upon one was not enough to outwit the perishing cold. ‘Nice day out?’ I asked tremendously casually, as we waited together for the kettle to come to the boil.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘What did you do?’ I said.

  ‘Pictures,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘On a beautiful day like this was?’ I said, tutting. ‘You youngsters and your films!’ I reached for the kettle just as the steam started to jet out and carried it carefully to the draining board where the bottle was waiting. ‘I thought you’d been on a picnic when I saw you with your big bag.’

  ‘No, not today,’ said Phyllis. I screwed the stopper into the hot bottle and wiped it dry. The trouble with being undercover, I thought to myself, was that one could not just keep digging away with question after question as usual; not without gaining a reputation as a nosy parker and making everyone clam up completely. Phyllis took the bottle and left me.

  Mr Faulds was locking the house for the night again. He turned the key in the back kitchen door, took it out and hung it on a hook hidden in shadows and almost out of reach. ‘Master’s instructions,’ he said, seeing my puzzled look. ‘But I’m with him all the way. I’d no more leave a key in a door inside than out. For one, a thief can slip a sheet of newspaper under and push the key out then pull it back through.’ I nodded; I had done this myself to get out of my dormitory and onto the streets of Paris, or rather had watched with fingers crossed as Daisy did it for me. ‘But even when the door’s too snug-fitted like this one is,’ he went on, ‘they can reach right in with a pair of pliers and twist the key round from the barrel end. I knew a girl once who did it inside a box in a magic act, and it doesn’t take any strength to speak of, it’s only knowing the knack like so many things.’ He had shot both bolts home, top and bottom, as he spoke and now he tried the handle, giving it a good rattle.

  He was at the sub-basement door when I picked my way carefully down the steps minutes later with my cocoa – Mrs Hepburn had whisked the milk to within an inch of its life as it boiled and had added extra cream, so that the cup had a coxcomb of froth like a barber’s shaving mug which threatened to spill over at every step – and as he threw the bolts the sound seemed to reverberate through the walls and echo across the arched stone ceiling above us.

  ‘Safe as houses, Fanny,’ he said. ‘You’ve nothing to fear.’

  Somehow, something about him saying it that way was more disconcerting than if he had said nothing and once inside I found myself peering timorously out into the dark garden and standing quietly behind my locked door listening for the sounds of I knew not what. I heard Clara come downstairs, go into her room across the passageway and lock her door behind her, then I heard the squeak of her bedsprings as she sat down.

  It took me well over an hour to finish writing up my notes and by the time I had got to recording my last conversation with Lollie, I was stiff-necked and sour-mouthed with exhaustion, hardly thinking about the words as I scrawled them, scarcely able to believe that this was the end of the same day that had begun with Eldry climbing the stairs, worrying about nothing more than the wrong newspaper for her master.

  Superintendent Hardy arrived at ten the following morning, striding into the house with great confidence and a new lease of energy; or as Clara, who witnessed his coming, described it: ‘As if he owned the place and was just gonny paint it.’

  He called for me as soon as he had finished with Lollie and I entered the parlour to find him standing looking down along the garden, rocking slightly on his heels.

  ‘All alone, Superintendent?’

  ‘We haven’t so much as a constable to spare,’ he said, turning round. ‘There were two hundred strikers down at Waverley station this morning, all walked in – miles, some of them – to stand on the pickets, and it takes time and men to clear it. You’ll have heard about yesterday, I’m sure.’

  ‘The gangs?’

  ‘I’ve a man in hospital and a police horse dead.’

  ‘Poor thing,’ I said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He got hit by a brick bouncing back out of a smashed shop window,’ said Hardy, very grim. ‘But he’ll recover.’ I did not like to admit that, of course, it was the horse after which I was asking.

  ‘I think it’s very foolish of the Congress,’ I said. ‘If ordinary people see mobs in the street it will only frighten them and harden their resolve.’

  ‘If you ask me, the unions are as surprised as anyone,’ said Hardy. ‘And the TUC can’t believe what they’ve started – everybody banging on their door asking to join up so they can down tools for the miners. Teachers was the last thing I heard on the wireless this morning. Teachers! This was from London, mark you, not here.’

  ‘That’s something then,’ I replied. ‘And you seem to have lots of volunteers.’

  ‘Hah!’ said Hardy. ‘Yes, well, the men at the electric works heard that there were students driving the electric trams and promptly downed tools – didn’t want to be supplying the juice for a blackleg service. So now there are students in the electric works too.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Is that wise?’

  ‘They’re engineering students,’ said Hardy, but he looked far from happy.

  ‘And what news of our case?’ I asked.

  ‘News indeed,’ he said. ‘Solid facts – bite down on them and break a tooth, just the way I like it. The doctor was up first thing and examined the body and it’s very r
evealing. There was a good dose of sleeping draught in his stomach, taken with brandy most likely. I asked Mrs Balfour if her husband was accustomed to use such a draught and she told me that no, Mr Balfour was an easy sleeper, never troubled with insomnia or with bad dreams. So that’s the first thing. And there was nothing in the dregs of your glasses, by the way.’

  ‘So it begins to look as if the widow’s in the clear?’

  ‘Especially since Dr Glenning’s considered opinion is that a girl couldn’t have done it. Not one in a hundred, he said.’

  Here the superintendent flicked through the pages of his notebook. It had filled considerably since the previous day, pages and pages of close, pencilled writing. At last he found what he was looking for and held it up to the light.

  ‘Not only was the knife driven in with some force, held there and twisted around to open the wound and expedite the flow of blood – you’re not going to faint, are you? Good. – which would have required considerable strength, but the victim was also held down to allow the attack to take place. There is bruising suggestive of a hand placed very firmly against the victim’s right shoulder before decease, effectively pinning him against the mattress. This bruise is four inches in width, five inches in length and with faint fingermarks showing a span of nine inches. The placing of this bruise and the clockwise rotation of the blade inside the wound point together towards a right-handed man. So there you have it. The murder was done by a right-handed man who was locked in the house over the night in question.’